If you're reading this sentence, you might have a fish to thank. Fish were the first animals to evolve jaws. They use their jaws primarily to eat, but also for defense, as tools—such as to burrow or ...

A scaly, finned creature that lived in water 385 million years ago descended from four-legged land animals, in a clear example of a “backward” step in evolution. Some fish grew legs and developed the ...

When you think about human evolution, there's a good chance you're imagining chimpanzees exploring ancient forests or early humans daubing wooly mammoths on to cave walls. But we humans, along with ...

Butterfly fish feeding on a coral reef. The ability to bite food off hard surfaces, such as coral, evolved about 50 million years ago and led to the rapid formation of new species of fish on coral ...

Reef fish evolved the ability to feed by biting prey from surfaces relatively recently, a UC Davis study shows. The innovation has driven an explosion of evolution in reef fish. Image shows a rainbow ...

A study published in the Nature journal alters how the evolution of fish has been historically understood. Fossilized fish and other sea creatures have often been pivotal in new scientific discoveries ...

Researchers in Alberta uncovered a fossil fish that rewrites the evolutionary history of otophysans, which today dominate freshwater ecosystems. The new species, Acronichthys maccognoi, shows early ...

Why do you think giraffes have such long necks? It’s a question that has perplexed scientists for years. Do you think giraffes have long necks to reach food in high places? Maybe you are onto ...

Fossils over 300 million years old reveal the evolution of a tongue bite in an ancient group of deep-bodied ray-finned fishes, such as Platysomus parvulus. Experts have uncovered the earliest known ...

The skulls of tetrapods had fewer bones than extinct and living fish, limiting their evolution for millions of years, according to a latest study. The skulls of tetrapods had fewer bones than extinct ...

To escape predators beneath the waves, a flying fish can shoot out of the water and glide long distances because its paired pectoral and pelvic fins, longer and more rigid than those of other fish, ...

For decades, river restoration has focused on returning waterways to conditions that existed before dams, weirs and ...